Monthly Archives: July 2017

Not that I’ve had to recharge my Magic Mouse yet, but decided that I would do it anyway. My keyboard and mouse that I got with my iMac were about 90% charged when I got them, so I thought I’d just let them run out of juice before I charge them again. Impatient me wouldn’t let it happen.

The keyboard is a bit better. I wanted the full-sized keyboard, but didn’t want the 2 extra weeks it would take them to pack it in the box. Charging my keyboard is fine. No big problem there. Why? Because the charging port is in a logical place.

Probably the most logical place to put a charging port. Way to go, Apple!

With the Magic Mouse, the charging port isn’t really in a logical place. But, really, where could they have put it? (Hint: probably on the side)

So what happens when this is a person’s ONLY mouse? Do they just have to wait until it charges? (I don’t really think that it takes very long to charge, but still, have to bitch about something.)

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of this mouse. I had another Magic Mouse but it was the first version of it. I didn’t really like that one either. It didn’t work very well with Monstro, my old Mac Pro. A friend of mine borrowed it and never bothered to return it, so yeah.

So what do I use? I use this old, worn out thing:

Trusty, reliable, old Dell mouse that I think I’ve had since I’ve first arrived in Australia. It doesn’t have a rubber ball or I wouldn’t be using it. I can’t go back to that!

The putting charging ports in stupid places isn’t only an Apple thing either. My Sony Xperia Z3 has it on the side. That’s not such a bad problem until you realize that the cover on it hinges on that side, so you can’t charge it with its cover closed. (I’m turning this phone into a home security camera, by the way.)

Usually Apple gets the design of their products right. The Magic Mouse is my only problem so far. This new computer has been awesome so far. I should be getting a delivery of memory in a few days to boost its performance. Right now, I have 8 GB of memory installed and have run into no problems so far. I’m going to put in another 32 GB of memory into this thing, then later, replace the 8 GB with another 32 GB. Crazy! I haven’t owned a computer with more than 8 GB of memory. Even 8 GB in my laptop was starting to do a terrible job.

That’s all from me at the moment. I’m just working on some video-related stuff now, since I have a computer that won’t choke on video editing software.

I posted a pretty interesting question on Twitter yesterday that said:

...does the USA or Texas deserve my gay foreign money?

Something that you probably already know is that I, like 64% of Americans, hate the current direction of US politics. We have an ineffective leader who is more interested in keeping his own interests afloat and making those with the inability to distinguish the difference between church and state happy. We have a man who is too busy making himself look good rather than making our country look good in control, something that I never thought would happen. We have a man who claims to be a LGBT+ ally, yet disrespects people in our community every chance he gets.

One of the things I am most afraid of is planning my wedding there and some religious nut job getting his way where it can’t happen. He’s already attacking trans people and trying to dismantle my right to marry the man I love.

I don’t like this feeling.

I’m rethinking whether I want to get married in Texas or not because I don’t agree with our hateful politicians. The services and goods I purchase there (plus the taxes I pay) go back to paying this never-ending cycle of hate. I don’t really want to be a part of that. It’s a bit sad because I wanted to do it locally for my family, but I am not confident in the USA (or Texas) anymore. I just don’t.

Why should I give more of my money to them if I can avoid it completely? (As a US citizen, I’m still required to pay tax on foreign earned income.)

I don’t see things getting better. I see them getting worse–a lot worse. So I’m going to back away with caution for now and either wait for marriage equality here in Australia, or jump across to New Zealand and do it there. Maybe then, I can go to the USA with some Oreos from here (proudly made in China) and have a cookies and water party.

I’d much rather spend money in a country that has laws protecting the people of my community. Though I can’t get married here, I still have more legal protections here than I would in the USA, simply because of who I love.

Let me preface this by saying that I hate having anything delivered in Australia. There’s so much I can complain and bitch about right now. Late last week, I ordered some office furniture because my iMac is sitting on something that resembles a little cart you’d put a microwave on. It has wheels. It’s quite convenient, but I am a little afraid that I’ll wheel it somewhere and BAM, it will fall to the ground. It’s not something I really want to happen.

So yes, I ordered 3 desks knowing that I would be away from home most of the next week. I thought my stuff would arrive on Friday. Well, over the weekend I got an email saying that it was being prepared for shipping, so I thought they’d get to it on Tuesday or something. Well, no, they sent it from the warehouse on Monday morning. The warehouse is really close too, so they tried delivering it on Monday. That was okay, the worst they can do is leave one of those cards that say “WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?”. They tried again on Tuesday. I called them that day and said, that I wasn’t expecting it to be delivered so early and needed it delivered Friday. They said they made a note of it. Well, they tried to deliver it again on Wednesday so finally I said fuck it and came home to wait for them to drop it all off. So here I am.

During this process, I would check my orders with the company I bought it from online and discovered that my order wasn’t found in the system 90% of the time. My account said that I had no orders. I was worrying whether I’d ever see my furniture or not.

I am just pissed that these companies don’t really communicate with you. They tell you a week, and you expect a week, so you plan on leaving the area until then. I mean, if I were at home, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It would be nice to get your stuff early. Not this time. I get to sit around again waiting for it to show up.

Screw you guys, I’m going home… and then getting KFC because I like to suffer.

The last few weeks were hectic and my last day of training (for now) has come and gone. Unfortunately, my last day didn’t go as well as I expected. You see, I have a certain love for a certain fast-food restaurant in Australia called KFC. Yes, that’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s a really gross habit, but for some reason, I love it. To make matters even worse, it’s a 2 minute walk away from where I live, so there is really easy access. The night before, I decided that I was going to eat it knowing that sometimes it upsets my stomach. (I have a really sensitive stomach. I always have had one.) So I ended up filling my belly full of grease the night before and starting at 3 am, my gastrointestinal tract was in full payback mode. I was throwing up and on the toilet most of the morning. I didn’t have any cramps or fever, but my body was just rejecting what I ate the night before.

I got to my training place feeling completely drained (literally) and told someonee I wasn’t feeling that great. They asked me why and I told them what my morning was like and that I was really, really tired. They told me to leave, so I did. I spent my morning trying to get that under control, trying to book a doctor’s appointment nearby (my usual doctor is about an hour and a half away), and just running around. I wasn’t having any major problems at all. The doctor told me that I cannot go back for 24 hours, so that was that. I was really upset because the hours I miss, I have to make up.

Everybody at the place I went to thought I had gastroenteritis (some people call it a stomach flu) but I pretty much knew that it was just a mix of eating the wrong thing the night before and my anxiety of finally getting to the end of this part of my training. So yeah, I was pretty bummed out for the whole day and it carried over until today. My belly is okay but still a bit grumbly.

So yeah, it’s time for me to relax a little bit and start the long, boring process of getting my paperwork together and finally getting to use my new iMac. Guys, the resolution on this thing is simply incredible! It’s good to go back to Mac.

It’s good to be able to spend some time with my partner too, though I’ve been glued to this screen. He’s a good sport.

It’s been a while since I sat down and wrote a post here, so I thought I’d write at least something while I have a few minutes of extra time. Quite a bit is happening around me at the moment which would explain my absence from my weblog (and other messengers). I’m just closing up the first part of my training to become better at my primary job. It’s actually nice to get back into it full-time again, but it’s really exhausting. I am also back to shift work which means that I go in tonight, leave, then wake up about 6 hours later to start the process all over again. Not fun, but it comes with the type of work I do, so I can’t complain too much.

People Person

I realised that I probably isolate myself from people a lot more than I should. I think working in IT will do that to a person, especially when they work for themselves and work from home. I would just attend a meeting or two per week, and then that was most of my social interaction. At the same time, my main career was on hold and ignored. I do like what I do, but I think sometimes my anxiety and social anxiety likes to take over at times and it just makes me panic a bit. I’m trying so hard to bust through it so I can live a life where my gut isn’t all messed up all the time, and I can be a bit more of a social person.

New Technology

To support my ongoing work in IT, I decided to get myself one of the 27 inch iMacs (the ones with the 5k display). I haven’t had much time to sit around and mess with it though which is really, really hard for me because I really love getting stuff in the mail, and better yet, I love opening boxes with new computer equipment. I think the first thing I did was install Steam and Starbound. I don’t even think that I bothered updating anything else after I opened it. There really wasn’t too many software updates since this computer is basically a month from being released.

So far, so good. It’s so much easier on my eyes.

I still have my 24 inch iMac sitting on the floor and feel a little sorry for it. He’s 10 years old this year and it still works really well despite having to replace the hard drive and a sometimes-malfunctioning graphics card. I don’t know what to do with it yet. I did sell it to my partner for $150 but it’s nice to have around. I used it for the whole day over the weekend and it was really well-behaved. It made me feel bad that I was replacing him, but 10 years is a really good run, wouldn’t you say?

Upcoming Vacation

My partner and I are heading off to Mornington Peninsula after my training completes. We haven’t had too much time together since he’s been back, so this will be good. I keep getting a little snippy with him because of my workload and the fact that I need to do about 12 things at one time. He’s been really good to me and he’s done a lot even though he’s still a bit sore from his surgery. He takes care of me very well but maybe it’s not working the other way around right now. I expect to get back into the groove of things once things calm down around here.

So for now, that’s it. I still have a while to go, so hopefully I can post sooner. There are a ton of things on my mind which have the unfortunate side effect of knowing not what to say when I have so much to say. It makes it really hard. A lot of those things are just emotions and thoughts about people in general and I guess a little bit about my mental health too. I think sometimes it’s good to get those things out in the open, but right now, I just need to stay calm and collect those thoughts for another day!

One of the downfalls about what I do, workwise, is that I can’t really talk about it here. It frustrates me a bit because there’s a lot of work- and study-related stress in my life right now. That’s why I haven’t really been here, because I’ve had to write in a journal every day as part of it, so by the time I finish, I’m not interested in writing anything here.

What I will say is that people sometimes piss me off. GOD I really wish I could say more here, but ethically and legally, I can’t. I will say that if a family member moves 1000 km away to be closer to you, you should at least look after them when they need it.

I’m going to have to leave it at that because I really want to leave my work life out of this blog. I’ll post something more upbeat soon, I’m sure.

For a while, I forgot that I had a weblog! Oops. It’s a good thing because something’s been on my mind lately. And before I start, this isn’t targeting one person, or one situation, but it definitely seems to happen over and over.

Basically, I have a really difficult time being assertive. I think that’s one of those traits that I got from my “sheltered” childhood and my mother’s personality.

When I have to say “no”, this is how it feels.

I have a really hard time telling people things that I know will potentially upset them. So, I end up sacrificing a lot of myself to make other people happy. When I decide to make a decision that goes against what other people want, I end up feeling like shit and it starts to preoccupy my mind in a really bad way.

For example, I’ve known for several months that I will have to do training from Monday to Friday this month for at least 8.5 hours a day. I’m also doing it about 3 km/1.9 miles from my place, so I don’t have to do my usual 160 km/ 100 mile traveling every day. Right now, I am working/studying about 20 hours a week, not including the 10 hours a week (or more) that I spend traveling. What I’ll be doing this month will be quite laborious. A lot of physical work so by the time the weekend comes around, I will, understandably, want to relax and do absolutely nothing.

I know that sounds awful, but I really require some time alone or I’ll go insane. Due to the nature of this training and being in the public, I’m not going to get very much of that.

My partner is also still in India and coming back in less than 10 days (and I haven’t seen him for months), so I need to get my place clean and ready for him. I have to do that over the weekend because it’s my only “free” time. So things are pretty full-on for a while.

So for past week or so, I’ve been re-emphasizing that I’m super busy. I can’t say that it’s easy and I still feel like crap that I can’t do things with and for people this month, but it is what it is. Like yesterday, I had to argue with my friend (for 2 hours) that I can’t help him move more than 1 day this week and why next weekend is off-limits. It was very painful and exhausting.

And see what I’ve done here? I feel like I’ve had to explain my reasons why I’m too busy for the next month! And even when I explain, no one believes me! This is what happens constantly. I end up feeling like a shit head because I am busy or need to look after myself during a time that is going to take me some time to adapt to. All I want is to do really well with my training, and to be able to spend time with my partner who I haven’t seen in a really long time. And this is temporary. It’s just a month-long craziness that I need to concentrate on and not have all this needless guilt in my head.

It’s so much easier said than done. I just lack assertiveness and I’m not sure how to get it without coming across as a total douche.